Because I have a streak of vanity and egotism, you can
listen to the brief excerpt below. The
only positive, really, is that I managed to get in my usual caveat when asked
whether the scheme would work: well, of course that depends what you’re trying
to achieve… I tried to point out that, in
itself, spotting and reporting an individual house being used to grow cannabis
isn’t going to do much to address the key issues that surround illicit drug use
in Britain today.

However, this interview isn’t something to boast about –
it’s certainly not my finest hour, as I haven’t actually seen and played with
one of these cards, and I don’t know how effective they’re likely to be.

This is my attempt at what I said in a
recent post academics should do: not just offering a critique of current
policy, but suggesting a constructive alternative.

Of course, in terms of drug policy we can take the sensible
position of the Irishman in the old joke: I wouldn’t start from here. However, as Virginia
Berridge points out so powerfully, simply thinking in the abstract doesn’t
automatically generate sensible, workable policy. We do need to start from here.

The crucial starting point is my old issue (and I make no apologies for sounding like a broken record):
what are we trying to achieve with drug/alcohol policy? Kathy Gyngell’s article focuses on individual
users, and the risks they might face.

Some of these aren’t as clear-cut as she suggests – for
example, the issues with the current criminal market doesn’t simply apply to
drug possession offences, and the prison population doesn’t represent all those
engaged with the criminal justice system, especially not for drug-related
offences, where a Drug Rehabilitation Requirement (DRR) will often be a more
appropriate solution.

However, these individual arguments aren’t the only issue
around there being a criminal market in drugs.
As I say in the interview, there are links with organised crime. But this isn’t just about the example of
trafficking that I managed to give in the interview; it’s also about the
general instability of producer nations – as the Economist article notes.

This is in fact, for me, one of the most concerning points most
about the current situation – and is likely to be how some of the greatest harm
occurs. However drug markets are
controlled or regulated, there are likely to be ‘addicts’ of some kind – people
currently benefit from treatment for issues with the legal drugs tobacco and
alcohol as well as heroin. An argument
might be made that there are more heavy drinkers than illicit drug users in the
UK, but that doesn’t necessarily imply greater health and crime costs. I’m yet to be convinced that a cost-benefit
analysis that looked at the global situation would conclude that greater damage
is done by alcohol than drugs, if the way in which the illicit trade
destabilises whole nations was taken into account.

One of the odd patterns in current drug policy is how
greater regulation of tobacco is occurring at the same time as liberalisation
of cannabis. Admittedly, this is taking
a global view, but as US states legalise cannabis – even for recreational
consumption – Australia has introduced plain packaging for tobacco, and Britain
is seriously considering this.

That is, a completely free market in drugs would lead to
high levels of harm – but so does attempted complete prohibition. According to this interpretation, therefore, the
most appropriate solution is a strongly regulated but legal market – somewhere
in the middle. Perhaps this approach
appeals to me simply because of my tendency to see both sides of an argument,
but it’s certainly worth thinking about.

What’s more, the current global trend suggests that this
might be the direction we’re heading in anyway: both plain packaging and
legalisation of cannabis for recreational use could be argued to sit somewhere
in the middle of this graph.

There are arguments about whether highly regulated legality
– through the Central Control Board for alcohol, for example – amounts to a
middle ground. Some see them as interfering
with the market so much that they’re approaching prohibition. This isn’t how I see them, however. For illicit drugs, from the position we’re at
currently, there would have to be decriminalisation before we even approached
this level of controlled legality.
Licensed consumption locations for products that are quite clearly not
‘ordinary commodities’ seems perfectly sensible, and it’s also perfectly
reasonable to imagine that certain conditions might be laid down in how those
properties are arranged and run.

This trend isn’t necessarily the result of conscious
planning – and my experience of policymaking is that these sorts of trends are
more complicated than that. We might be
stumbling towards this policy mix thanks to an accidental ‘synthesis’ resulting
from a whole range of groups including public health or tobacco control
lobbyists as well as campaigners for drug legalisation. This is precisely my
view of how policy should be made.

So maybe there’s reasons to be cheerful after all, despite
the shortcomings of scratch and sniff cards and Kathy Gyngell.

About Me

I live and work in Dorchester, a beautiful town in Dorset not far from the south coast.
I’m a Senior Health Programme Advisor within the team that commissions drug and alcohol treatment services through Public Health Dorset, which operates across Bournemouth, Poole and rural Dorset.
I'm also a Visiting Fellow in the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences at Bournemouth University.
How did I get here? Well I did a PhD, also at Bournemouth University, looking at ‘binge’ drinking in Bournemouth and thinking about how class and gender are part of how people understand their own and other people’s drinking. (Search on eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk)
After finishing the PhD I moved to London for a couple of years and worked for the Russell Group of universities, dealing most closely with issues of community engagement, widening participation and, unexpectedly, immigration.
When an opportunity came up to head back down to Dorset and work on drug and alcohol issues, I grabbed it with both hands.
I'm on Twitter: @WilliamHaydock